The Brad Barritt Question – Lets talk about stats.

Posted By The Dead Ball Area on Sep 10, 2015 in General Analysis |

Stats are a very useful tool, traditionally the preserve of the professional analysis team, over the last decade more and more stats have become available to aspiring Billy Beane III’s the world over. It’s an arms race my friend and numbers are the weapon of choice, often seen and defended as the one and only gospel truth.

With access to stats opening up for fans it’s almost impossible to have a discussion without numbers being rolled out to support, or veto, an opinion or point. Someone who doesn’t have access to the stats and is merely using their powers of observation is usually dismissed in one short swift sentence and arguments ensue (come on we’ve all done it).

Yet whilst stats are incredibly helpful it doesn't take a genius to know they very seldom tell the whole truth.

In Rugby two of the most popular positions to debate is the back row and midfield. Maybe it’s because they are strangely similar positions in their ball carrying and defensive rolls, maybe it’s because they are usually the guys outside of the halfbacks who are most visible and thus everyone has an opinion on them, or maybe it’s just because their roles lend themselves to number crunching. 

On Saturday Brad Barritt played his first England game in about 9 months, a lot of what I’ve read has, while not directly criticised him, questioned his effectiveness, and checking his stats* alongside his opposite number, and his own replacement, it kind of seems justified:

(*taken from ESPN)

As standalone stats that’s none too impressive, in fact it’s pretty damning. Especially when you look at his opposite number Robbie Henshaw, or Sam Burgess who played only 20 minutes. Plucking out their carry stats and defenders beaten alone you’d say they were far better than Barritt.

Perhaps, but putting aside Henshaw and Burgess the issue for me is that these stats don’t really tell us the impact the players interventions have on the game. They don’t demonstrate how England use Barritt within their structures compared to both Henshaw and Burgess. It doesn’t tell us the worth of those 7 tackles or the impact they had at that specific time, they don’t illustrate Barritt’s decision making both on and off the ball, or how he is involved in organising a defence or the support running he does.

In fact all it tells us is he made 7 tackles and 7passes,  ran 6 times etc….

It's been flagged up that those tackle stats are low. I guess so, but  another way to look at it is if a team knows he's a solid defender why would they send people down his channel off primary phase ball? The answer for me is they wouldn't, thus bringing his tackle stats down in volume but still providing a useful impact on defence and thus making him effective within the team structure.

There is a an old saying that good defenders don't tackle, and I think this is as good an example of that as you will get.

His attacking stats are also interesting to dive into.

People tend to think of Barritt as a very defensive minded crash ball merchant who does’t really get over the gain line, and on the basis of the stats it’s a valid point. Henshaw makes double the runs of Barrit and a massive 64 metres to his 5. But in watching the warm up game it's clear Ireland use Henshaw to punch the gain line a lot more than England use Barritt to carry. Which means bigger carry stats for Henshaw, while Barritt is used as far more of a decoy runner fixing defenders to create space for others meaning lower carry stats.

Just as an example of the effect Barritt can have, cast your mind back to Johnny Mays disallowed try. Whilst not directly involved Barritt runs a perfect holding and blocking line on Henshaw. First fixing him and then slowing him down from covering Joseph properly and by proxy stopping Tommy Bowe from drifting out onto Tom Youngs early. This leaves Tommy Bowe isolated with a 2vs1, and if not for a shockingly bad pass from Young’s a try wold have been scored.

Barritt Block

Barritt Block 2

How do you reflect that kind of contribution via stats? It's difficult.

Another important fact the stats don’t show are that at least three of Barritt’s 7 carries were cleaning up other peoples mistakes, and that a fourth was from him tracking back and defusing a kick through by Irelands Simon Zebo that had completely bamboozled Anthony Watson. That’s four important interventions that helped his team out massively, all coming at important moments in the game none of them reflectd in the stats.

So what about Josephs lack of impact as an attacking centre in this game? Is it a direct result of Barritts lack of attacking ability. Well Barritt gave 7 passes which indicates that Joseph wouldn't have recived much ball. Yet Joseph received the ball 24 times. Of the 7 passes Barritt gave, only one of them was to Joseph which he then kicked downfield. With England often opting to use Joseph as a second wave strike runner and Ford as a distributing 2^nd receiver in the slightly wider channels, I’m actually of the opinion that Barritt had very little scope to influence Josephs attacking space other than a couple of dummy runs to hold defenders as described above.

Of course all of this is me interpreting the stats how i see fit, but late in the 1st half of the game at 36/37 minutes Ben Youngs put a delightful kick into the corner to pin Ireland back on their try line. It's a lovely, nay great kick, but what's not flagged up is that England had a 4 on 3 overlap with Youngs making the 5th attacker, as he crabs across the pitch, the Irish defence sits down ready to tackle and Barritt runs a tight unders line that puts him in space with no marker – Youngs ignores this and kicks for the corner, squandering a 4 vs 3 with a genuine line break opportuntity for the next two men out.

Youngs Kick

It's a great bit of decision making by Barritt, but it counts for nothing because of an average piece of decision making from Youngs, the point isn't to criticise Youngs but to demonstrate stats wont pick these kind of things up.

I guess the ultimate point of this post isn’t to say Barritt is a world class center or is an attacking behemoth but to illustrate that I felt he had a bigger impact than perceived and to try to illustrate why he's such an important player in the England midfield. But it's also about the need to use more than stats, or more than video, to gauge performance. The key is how coaches use those stats in tandem with visual references/material, you can’t take one in isolation and base a whole player assessment on it.

Comments

comments